Americana
by grisabele
Summary: Because I wondered what Hollywood might do to our beloved Fatal Frame.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

_September 24, 1986_

Mark Hughes wasn't sure what to expect from the Hathorne Mansion. As far as he could tell, it was just a large, imposing house, built to resemble a castle. The years had weathered the stone. There were many broken windows, mostly on the first floor and the porch was in a sorry state. There were two turrets on the mansion, and ivy crept up them. It wasn't a place that most people went out of their way to visit.

_I really hope that Joel and the others are all right..._

Joel Thomas, a close friend and mentor of his, had been fascinated with the Hathorne family for years. He was a famous writer, and he'd written a history of the Hathornes that had stayed on the top of the bestseller list for months. But Joel's true passion was the paranormal. He loved reading up on supernatural phenomenon, and most especially, he loved to hunt for ghosts.

So it was no surprise to Mark when Joel called him from a train station on August 20 and told him that he was moving to the Hathorne Mansion.

"Are you sure about it, Joel?"

"Positive!" Joel crowed, "There are hundreds of ghost hunters who have taken EVP on the grounds, but they all refuse to go inside. An associate of mine tells me that one ghost hunter went in there alone and they found his mangled body outside. So no one goes in."

"You're not going in there alone, are you?" Mark asked, alarmed.

"Of course not. I have my assistant, Cassie Gray, with me. And the editor of the magazine dealing with the paranormal that I contribute to, Kevin Ward."

"Oh." This wasn't reassuring, somehow.

"I'll call you when we get settled in and when we get a phone line in there. Our train's leaving, though, I gotta go."

"Okay," Mark said, "Take care."

Then Joel hung up.

Three days went by and Mark didn't hear anything from Joel. Then four days, then five days, then a week. One day, his younger sister, Michelle, came home from school with the mail in hand.

"Anything from Joel?" Mark asked. Michelle shook her head. "No."

His heart sank, and he felt a growing suspicion that something was terribly wrong.

After a month, Mark began to worry. No one had heard anything from Joel Thomas, his assistant, or his editor. Even the newspapers were beginning to speculate on his whereabouts.

**FAMOUS AUTHOR MISSING**

**Star author Joel Thomas was reported missing by his stepdaughter early this morning. He has not been seen or heard from since August 20, when he told his daughter he would be moving into the Hathorne Mansion to do some research for his next book, which was presumably going to be about the alleged ghostly phenomenon that occurs in the mansion and on the grounds. Mr. Thomas had promised his stepdaughter he would call as soon as he was able to get a phone line into the mansion.**

**Accompanying Mr. Thomas were his assistant, Cassie Gray, and Kevin Ward, the editor of "Unnatural Phenomenon" magazine. Ms. Gray and Mr. Ward are also missing and family members**

**CONTINUED ON PAGE A2**

Mark shook his head. There was something very, very wrong with this.

The morning of September 24th, he gathered up his notebook and newspaper clippings, as well as a flashlight and headed for his car. He was determined to find out exactly what had happened to his friend. He passed a storage closet and paused. For some reason, he felt drawn to it. Opening it, he discovered his mother's antique camera sitting on the center shelf. He took it on a whim.

Now, as he was entering the mansion, he felt a sense of apprehension. _Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. _It loomed over him, beckoned him in...

Mark pushed the double doors at the entrance open, marveling at how easy it was to do so even though the doors probably hadn't been opened for a hundred years and he doubted that Joel had oiled them. He took a deep breath and walked in, shining the flashlight through the room. He was in some kind of foyer...faded paintings hung on the walls and there was a large brass chandelier over his head. He cautiously proceeded through the entrance, taking a door to his left.

What Mark saw in that hallway sent chills down his spine. There were ropes suspended from the ceiling and a mirror on one wall...was this some kind of recreation room? Mark shuddered, and moved to walk...but stopped dead in his tracks.

Joel Thomas was walking down the hallway, just ahead of him, and he vanished around a corner. Mark chased him. "Joel! Wait!"

He passed the mirror and turned the corner, ignoring the ropes that hit him. There was a door there, and he hastily pulled it open and hurried in.

This room was some kind of parlor. There was a fireplace on one wall, a piano in one corner of the room, a faded rug on the floor, a card table and chairs...all covered with at least six inches of dust and all in need of repairs. There was a staircase and a balcony on the opposite end of the room. Mark cautiously approached it. Suddenly, a man appeared on the balcony, facing Mark, and he looked down. Mark recognized the man at once. "Joel?"

Before he could come any closer, the apparition vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

_Something is very wrong about all of this..._

Mark didn't hesitate. He ran up the stairs and onto the balcony. There was a notebook there...

**GHOSTS OF HATHORNE MANSION- NOTES**

**PROPERTY OF JOEL THOMAS**

Mark bent down and picked up the notebook...

_He saw, in his mind's eye, Cassie, Joel, and Kevin cautiously walking down the hall with ropes dangling from the ceiling. At least one thousand hands reached for them...and as though sensing their presence, Joel quickly turned around._

_Seeing nothing, he slowly turned around and caught up with his companions._

Mark shivered. The stairs creaked behind him...was someone coming up?

"Joel? Hey, Joel?"

_Creak...creak..._

He stood up and turned around.

"Who's there?"

_Creeak..._

"Joel, this isn't funny! If it's you, say so!"

A pitiful moan was the only answer he got. Without thinking, Mark pulled the camera out of his bag and put it to his face.

There was a spirit of a man bound with ropes staggering toward him..or, rather, the spirit of what was left of a man. Mark panicked and took a picture just as the thing lunged at him. It was sent hurtling backwards...and then it simply vanished. Mark lowered the camera.

"What...was that?" he whispered, half-expecting an answer. But all remained still He slowly walked down the stairs and headed for the door across the room. _This is a good start, _he thought, _So maybe--_

"_Where are YOU going?" _demanded an icy, female voice that sent chills down Mark's spine. He sensed a sinister presence behind him,and he didn't dare look behind him. Instead, he broke into a run. Amazingly, the door to the rope hallway was open, and he charged out, trying to escape the presence, ignoring the ropes that smacked against his face...

And then he felt as if he had been grabbed by a thousand hands...


	2. 1:1: The Hathorne Mansion

**A/N: Hello, hello. Thank you, reviewers! Whee. Yes, this is indeed Fatal Frame: Americanized. Except I would do a better job Americanizing FF than Hollywood. **

**Rehd-fawx: Wow. That is creepy. Eeerie coincidence...lol. Thank you for the nice review.**

**TeoToriFoxfire: Thank you for the nice review! I'm glad I was able to be scary.**

**NIGHT ONE: THE STRANGLING RITUAL**

**Hour One: Hathorne Mansion**

"_**High on a hill sits a big old house with something wrong inside it/Spirits haunt the halls and make no effort now to hide it"--The House Upon the Hill, from the Secret Garden **_

_October 3rd, 1986_

Seventeen year-old Michelle Hughes had hoped it wouldn't come to this. She had hoped that her brother would come home from that mansion and that his friend Joel would be fine and that everything could go back to normal. But she knew better. The second day that Mark had been gone, she knew better. Something had gone wrong on September 24th, she had sensed it, and now Michelle felt that it was her duty to find out exactly what.

Still, she wished that she could find out exactly what had happened to her brother _without _going into that creepy old Hathorne Mansion.

As she walked up the old cobbled path to the mansion's entrance, she felt a heaviness in the air. As though hundreds of thousands of terrible things had happened in that house..as though those terrible things refused to leave and saturated the air.

It was at times like this that Michelle hated having a sixth sense. Because of that sixth sense, she saw things everyone else didn't, heard things..._felt things. _Mark had had that sixth sense, too. He was the only one, other than her long-dead mother, that understood her, and without him Michelle felt so utterly _alone. _

She secured her brown ponytail, and, gripping the flashlight she'd brought along, she braced herself and pushed the double doors of the Hathorne Mansion open.

_Whatever happens, there's no going back now. _

Michelle walked into the foyer and looked around. A tarnished brass chandelier dangled from the ceiling, and she could make out some faded portraits on the walls. She noticed a door on the western side of the room, and she walked toward it, certain that her brother could not have stayed in the foyer. She paused then, sensing a presence behind her. She slowly turned around...

_Nothing._

She sighed with relief and continued walking toward the door.

As she approached the door, she was aware that someone was watching her. She quickly turned around.

"Mark?"

The person behind her wasn't Mark, though. Michelle was face-to-face with a pale, disheveled-looking man wearing a black t-shirt and khaki pants. She slowly backed toward the door, afraid of what he might attempt, but, just as suddenly as the man had appeared, he vanished. Michelle froze on that spot and fought her urge to run for the doors and _get the hell out of there._

_I can't leave, _she thought, _Because Mark's in here. Because he could be hurt. _Steeling her nerves, Michelle turned the doorknob and walked into the next room. What she saw sent chills down her spine. The beams on the ceiling were visible, and ropes dangled from them. If she had wanted to, and if the ropes weren't so old, Michelle could probably have climbed up onto the beams.

_What are those ropes FOR?_ Michelle thought. Shaking her head, she walked down the hall. She saw a mirror at the end of the hallway, and laying on the floor in front of it...

_That looks like Mom's old camera! _Her heart raced, and Michelle walked toward the mirror. When she got there, she realized, with horror, that it was her mother's old camera...and underneath it was her brother's notebook! She carefully picked up the camera and the notebook. Hm. There seemed to be other pages from a different person in there. She carefully opened the notebook and read them:

**EDITOR'S NOTE I**

**_August 20_**

**Mr. Thomas wants some background material for his next work. There's reportedly a book about the Hathorne mansion by a folklorist that once lived here. It's a book about all the rumors of human sacrifice rituals and mysterious disappearances of young girls between the ages of eight and sixteen who were invited to the mansion...and never returned.**

**The author is one Edward Majors, but the title of the book is apparently "Unknown".**

_**August 22**_

**I can't find that book anywhere, but I did do some research on the folklorist. He lived in the Hathorne Mansion to do his research on it, but after some event he and his entire family just...vanished. His book isn't anywhere, but I found a missing persons article from the period when he lived in the house.**

**EDITOR'S NOTES II**

_**September 10, 11 A.M.**_

**It looks like all those murders in the nearby town and that strange earthquake last week all have something to do with this mansion. I bet Joel's book is going to include all of these events. I wonder if he'll let me include an excerpt in my magazine..?**

_**September 10, 4 P.M.**_

**The entrance door is broken. When did that happen? We're going to have to find another way out, because it won't open.**

**EDITOR'S NOTES III**

_**September 11**_

**I haven't been feeling well the past few days. Actually, I haven't been feeling well since Cassie took my picture.**

**What do those ropes _mean_?**

Michelle shuddered and closed the notebook. As she did so, she caught her reflection in the mirror in front of her. But there was the reflection of...someone behind her, too. The reflection of ghostly white woman in a white, medieval-styled dress and long, white-blond hair that fell into her face, obscuring all but her mouth, which was twisted in a wicked, malicious smile...and around the wrists, ankles, and neck of the woman were ropes.

Michelle froze, paralyzed with fear as the woman's reflection moved toward her. She quickly looked behind her. There was no one there.

_A ghost?_

As the ghost came nearer, she could hear its voice in her mind, as clearly as if the ghost had spoken out loud.

_(suffer)_

Michelle screamed, and the ghost vanished...


End file.
